The final installment. Thanks for reading.

For this to make any sense, you’ll first need to read:

- Part 1

- Part 2

- Part 3

Let’s begin Part 4…

This queue was moving, very slowly. One row of vehicles every twenty/thirty minutes. And we were the very back of it and I knew how long it was to the front as we’d driven from it. It was going to take hours, and indeed it did. After a good four or five hours, with no movement in the final two, signs were suggesting that the bridge was closed again. But John Wayne was not to be defeated; the ‘let’s turn around and re-queue for the bridge we spent all day queuing for’ plan had not turned out to be the master-stroke he had hoped for. But his bow had many strings, which would of course make it no longer a bow but something closer resembling a harp. But that’s not relevant to the story. He had a cunning plan….

Getting the cars in front of us to bunch up a bit, freeing up a space directly in front of us, he sent his team out to start moving traffic. This was the plan:

Traffic was stuck in three lanes, with us in the center lane. Using the space in front of us, he could get the vehicle on our right to pass up and take that space, freeing up a space behind them in the right hand lane for the vehicle behind us to join. We could then reverse into that space freeing up space in front of us for the car that just joined the right-hand lane, to now join the center lane. After some initial reluctance people started moving. Slowly at first, incase this new lane could be even worse than their other stationery one. Slowly, slowly, center lane to right lane, reverse, right lane to center lane and repeat, it started to work like a charm, it was pure poetry to see the speed with which we were making our way out to the back of the queue and closer to ending the ‘queuing for the bridge groundhog day’. I felt elated, ecstatic even.

The final car moved from behind us, to beside us, to in front of us and we were clear, out of the back of the queue of cars that’d joined since we joined the queue hours before. We were just about to turn the bus around (inface we were at a 45′ angle, when I spotted flashing lights in the back window of the bus. That can’t be good right? Right. It was the police. They disapproved of the master plan. We would not be allowed to turn around and drive the wrong way up this road (there was a central reservation not allowing us to move to the other side of the road). Instead we were told to get back in the queue and wait like everyone else, which we promptly did. Only now we the very last vehicle at the back of the queue and we’d just lost 4 hours for nothing. It was starting to feel like something or someone was against us. I’d lost the will to live. Annett had been muttering and swearing in German for hours. I couldn’t pick up most of the vile words being used but I knew if translated and told to the Chinese government they would result in us being lynched, and our vital organs hastily sold on the black market. Thirty Eight hours had passed.

We queued again (spotting a pattern here?!). It took another few hours of the waiting game before we slowly reached our original spot in the queue, then we edged forward of that point, to near the front of the queue, then very near the front of the queue, then jesus christ we’re the front of the queue and oh my god, could it be? Oh yes it is, we’re back on the bridge again! We sped back to where we’d spent the previous night, meaning in a total period of twelve hours we’d moved a distance of……0.00kms or minus one bridge depending on how you want to look at it. Impressive work. The bus cheered as we crossed the bridge the second time. Getting off, we all braced ourselves for more congestion but having already proved that our patience was longer than anyone else’s, everyone else had given up and for the next few hours we were able to drive unhindered, breaking 20kms/hr on several occasions, an almost dizzying speed. My fears of now suffering from motion sickness after so much time stationary proved unfounded. It was such a relief to be moving, I wouldn’t have cared if they’d be driving us right back to Tangkou, as long as we were moving it had to be positive, right? We broke out the last of our food (the Pringles) in celebration. How we weren’t ravenous I don’t know.

Forty one hours had passed before we saw the first sign for Wuhan. The end was not exactly in sight, but bar us running into another bridge, it was within today’s driving distance. You noticed the relief on the bus, a collective exhale of stress we’d been carrying, people began to fidget again, re-discovering some nervous energy as the end of our captivity approached. Watching the drivers crew pay the toll for us to enter Wuhan felt like hostage release negotiations, I would guess our release fee was less than $1, very reasonable for 45 hostages. But the adventure was not quite over yet. We crossed into Wuhan, which was as huge and similar looking as the other Chinese cities we’d been to. First we were driven to the buses office, where they had to change some tyres. Why this couldn’t wait until they’d dropped us off I don’t know and they couldn’t explain when I asked. Once complete we were ready to head to our drop-off point (well presumably) when a small puppy ran under the bus to hide from its owner. Owner being a loose definition in China for the person who has overall responsible for the dog, even if that responsibility is just to feed it up until its ready to be stewed. Perhaps the dog sensing his fate, sort solace under the bus. John Wayne and crew leapt to the task instantly creating another gem of a plan. Running to assist the owner the team grabbed poles to thrust under the bus at the dog. This, while sending the dog crazy, barking and yelping, but didn’t re-enforce in him the idea that all was well and he should probably come out of hiding. Who would have known huh? Fumbling for the missing piece of the masterplan they brought out an empty potato sack and took turns to drive the dog down to one corner where a member of the crew would set out the bag, hoping the dog would run into it. Anyone that’s owned a dog would have known that when cornered its unlikely to run into a giant carrier bag wielded by an angry looking Chinese man with a pole. This charade lasted a good 45 minutes, and had I still any energy left I’d of gone down to encourage them to just leave the dog alone until, sensing that the danger was gone would have come out of its own accord. Luckily a girl arrived, told all the men to go away then said the mandarin equivalent of
“Here boy, here boy, ah cute like doggy, aren’t you a good boy, ah you’re a cutey.”
The dog ran straight out, she grabbed him and the owner came and carried him away. Well, carried is perhaps generous to say carried, what he actually did was lift him up by pinching him in the back of the head using just two fingers and swinging him left and right in the air, back across the road to the restaurant. Forty-three hours and thirty minutes had passed.

The bus then drove us to the central bus station. Immediately the bus was swamped left and right by people trying to sell us things. Although we were at the bus stop, we couldn’t accept that it was really over. Something else must go wrong, surely? But the door opened and people began leaving. The crew all stood at the front of the bus and said goodbye shaking hands with everyone and joking about the ordeal. Gingerly we got up, collected our things and when it was our turn to say goodbye I felt that strong bond had developed between us all. When shaking Johns hand he gave me this look, which said (at least how I interpreted it) ‘Retarded western man with pea-size bladdered girlfriend. You’re alright, you know. You’re alright.’

It was a scene reminiscent of saying goodbye to your eldest son on his first day at university. Go on now son you’re free. I’ve taught you all the life skills you need, there’s nothing more you can learn from me now. You can sleep in a size the space of a matchbox, live on half a pastry a day, pee anywhere and not make a fuss. Barely even a peep. Good on ya’. Go live the simple life.

“I will, and thanks” my eyes said. I nearly cried.

My brain on the other hand said “yeah fucking right you retard, the only time you’d get me on a bus again is if I could drive it at great speed over your head. Got anymore great plans to get us out of the bus station John? Perhaps you’d recommend we avoid the busy footpaths by digging a tunnel out instead, using just our toothbrushes?”.

We ran to the nearest five star hotel we could find, ordered room service of sweets, cakes, cookies and spent the rest of the day watching sleeping, eating, repeatedly showering and waiting for the news of our release to break on CNN.

Before you get started, you’ll probably want to read

- Part 1

- Part 2

Eventually we stopped again, as it began dusking on day two. We joined a queue. Well at least I think it was a queue. Does a queue have to move, to technically be a queue? If so it wasn’t a queue, but a collection of equally stuck people, huddling together in motor vehicles, perhaps for warmth. I had no idea what we were queuing for, and an attempt to get information from John Wayne’s crew had just resulted in bemused looks, and lots of laughter. So resigned to having no idea what was happening and absolutely no power to change it we settled in for another night in the queue. This time there seemed to be a realization that we weren’t going anywhere soon, so we could get on and off the bus for toilet breaks as we pleased. Alongside the bus was a sheer drop to the left and the right, leaving no choice but to just pee on the road, next to the bus, or someone else’s bus, or truck, or car. The choice was yours, I switched each time, just to keep it fresh (the variation not the road). Annett could now pee in the open public, so that part was no problem and she had acquired what would no doubt be a valuable transferable skill, even if it probably wouldn’t make it onto her CV.
As the hours drifted by, and the evening became the night I think I drifted in and out of sanity. I’m guessing it was the potent cocktail of frustration, hunger, futility, cramp, tiredness and cold that caused it. I started wondering if maybe we’d been kidnapped. No-one on the bus appeared in the slightest bit concerned that we got on the bus one day and instead of getting off it the next day were we just going to disappear for another day at least. No-one called their wife, husband, family, work. No-one had a phone; the girl at the back got off just a few hours after getting on, perhaps tipped off by the dentists, sneaky dentists. Surely our fellow captives must have been worried about us? If so, why did they not look more worried? Maybe we’d been kidnapped? I thought maybe there were news reports announcing our kidnapping being shown on the BBC, threats of executions if John Wayne didn’t receive a large PayPal payment or some distant comrades weren’t released from a prison in Cuba. They weren’t able to politely inform us that we’d been kidnapped as no-one spoke English, so they’d just put us on the bus and driven us to the middle of nowhere, where our resolve and fight would be destroyed through humiliating bouts of sleep deprivation, involuntary hunger strike and public urination torture.

I also thought about what would happen if this had occurred in the UK. We were now twenty-six hours into this trip, in the middle of our second night and there was no bus mutiny, not even a hint of dissent. No complaints, no challenges to the driving crews’ authority. Everyone just sat there, barely saying a word to each other. In the UK if the bus had stopped moving without explanation I guess it would have been about four minutes before someone went to the front to ask:

(Four minute delay) “What’s going on, driver?”

“The bridge is closed. Because of the bad weather” the driver would say.

The message would ripple back through the bus amid a chorus of ‘oh no, you must be joking, you’re ‘avin a laugh’

A few minutes would pass, someone else would approach the driver…

(Fifteen minute delay) “Driver, this simply will not do. Eastenders will be on in 60 minutes and I must get home to see whose turn it is to kill their husband and bury him under the stairs.”

(Twenty five minute delay) Mobile phones would be produced, friends would be called “You’re not going to believe this! They’ve closed the bridge.”

“No way?” They would exclaim.

“Yeah I know, utterly ridiculous isn’t it, unbelievable, I mean what do we pay taxes for?! The government can’t even keep a simple bridge in operation.”

(Thirty minute delay) Someone would approach the driver with a plan. “I called a friend of mine and he suggested that if we just turn around, take a left, left, second right, straight over at the lights, take a right passed the fish and chip shop we can join the A421 passed cragglyhead-upon-tyne which will take us around this bridge and we’ll be home in time for tea and biscuits.”

“Erm, no, I know that road and its usually congested, and it’s a long de-tour” the driver would reply. “I’m sure if we just stay put we can wait this out, it will probably re-open again in a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?! Do you think I have a few minutes to spare? Do you have any idea how important I am?! I work in the city you know, yes that’s right the city! I don’t have time to spend idling here in this elongated coffin on the road to nowhere with riff raff like you.”

“Which city?” the driver says, puzzled

“The city! Asshole!” he would reply, bluntly, as if there were more than one.

(Forty minute delay) The Sun is called, prepares a front page exposes “Broken Britain is BUST - Public transport meltdown!!”

(Forty-five minute delay) “Sorry driver, but the passengers and I have taken a vote and found you to be incompetent and no longer fit for service. Hunger levels have reached a dangerous new high, fast approaching what could only be described as ‘peckish’.” So we will now kill and eat you. Sorry about that, no hard feelings though old chap there really is no other choice. Rule Britannia.”

(One hour delay) Driver is eaten. People give up, get off and walk home.

(One and a half hour delay) Everyone arrives home, begins writing the memoirs of their hardship for serialization in weekly women’s magazines alongside Britney’s latest yawn.

Meanwhile another night passes, and the bus hasn’t move an inch…..

The next morning and its now thirty four hours since we left Tangkou. We’re still in the queue, which still hasn’t moved. We’ve given up all hope of every getting off the bus. Forget our pasts Annett, we were different people then. Now we’re bus people. We can make it work, we’ll just live here in our bunks forever. My body will slowly adapt and shrink in upon itself, collapsing vertebrae until I can lay flat instead of concertinaed like an English Monkey Accordion. We can decorate my window with hand-drawn dust imagery, there’ll be all the spit you can drink courtesy of our Chinese bus friends, I’ll take a job, anything to pass the time maybe become a full-time yawner or head scratcher both valued occupations, you can be a bus wife and stay at home in the day keeping the coops clean. We won’t have much, but we’ll make it work.

Okay, at this point something had clearly snapped and it was more than delusion, I’d gone full blown crazy. Luckily at roughly the same time something snapped in John Wayne as well, and he manoeuvred the bus onto the equivalent of the hard shoulder. There we started slowly moving past the waiting traffic. I have no idea why now we were allowed to use this lane before, I was just relieved to see us moving again. We passed waiting buses and cars, although there were plenty of spaces where vehicles had just given up, turned round and left presumably also by the hard shoulder. Anyway, there was no time for analysis, we were free and moving. It was time for breakfast, the other half of the croissant. Then after a brief period of empty road, we turned a corner to see………………..another queue.

Different, yet still very familiar. We’d been here before. Ah yeah, awesome, another freakin’ queue. I’d of swapped my first born child for a KitKat by this point. For the first time we contemplated abandoning the bus and just following blindly some of the people walking past to try and find a town where we could wait out the bad weather. But we had no idea where that town might be, and knew for a fact that if we did find this town we would be unable to communicate with anyone and would be just ignored. We got off the bus and began walking around a bit trying to decide whether to take our chances. A girl who’d been walking along the road begged to join our bus, literally begged. At first they said no, but then took pity upon her. This didn’t exactly fill us with the confidence we need to abandon the bus and its warm blankets. Amazingly the next time we passed her on the way to the toilet she informed us that she spoke a little English and she could help us if we wanted. We wanted. Did she perhaps have a magic carpet we could borrow? No. Ah, shame. Instead she translated for us while we spoke to John and his crew. He confirmed that the bridge was closed, no idea when it would open, we were a little over half through the journey, there was a town a few kms back where everyone is also stuck, no taxis, no hotel, best to stay put.

Then something quite unexpected happened, the queue started moving. The crew scrambled to put the snow chains back on the tyres and we edged closer to the bridge, inch by inch by inch closer to our destination. Within thirty minutes we were crossing the bridge, wheels spinning, very gingerly as we moved slowly across trying not to slip down the ravine that already housed one overturned bus. Our progress was good and a mere 5 minutes later we reached the other end of the bridge and saw the queue of vehicles waiting to cross in the opposite direct. Poor buggers, I muttered as we passed lines and lines of waiting cars, trucks and buses. I know how you feel. Hold on in there, just another hour or two. Then inexplicably with the taste of freedom on our tongues, the bus stopped, turned around and joined the back of the queue to cross the bridge we’d just spent the last day queuing to cross?!?! WTF? Was this some sort of joke? Did we love the bridge that much that we needed to ride it again? Missing our queue friends back on the other side? Had Sandra Bullock boarded the bus to inform us of a reverse Speed situation, drive over 5kms/hr and a bomb will go off?

Backpacking China Pt 3 to come soon….

I’ve been here a month or so now, that times flown by, house, job hunting and getting to know a few bits of what is a massive city (in terms of space, there aren’t actually that many people here). I’ll be honest I didn’t really know anything about New Zealand before I moved here, other than the usual things - Crowded House and Lord of the Rings, oh and sheep. It’s a bit like a PG version of 18 rated England, most of the bad stuff has been removed and whats left is the occasional moderate sexual reference that some viewers may find offensive.

Its easy to mock New Zealand, and the first thing that surprised me is how much people do, even kiwis. Its a lovable underdog, fighting to be taken seriously but lacking in credibility beyond Flight of the Concords, a NZ show famous for mocking NZ. I think its up to kiwis to be a bit more patriotic, to stand up for their country. I came here with no knowledge, and therefore no pre-conceptions it was just a whim decision made in an internet cafe in Cambodia, based solely on the fact that the only friend I have in this half of the world lives in Auckland. So when people mock New Zealand, telling me that its only good for a bungee jump or that I missed the party as everyone has left and moved to Australia, I’m like a young kid being taught swear words by an older cousin, if you tell me that I don’t know any better if you bash it I’ll believe you.

As a geek, the first thing that struck me about the place is that the technology market is small and a good year or two behind Europe. Impressively I’ve got a job in both mobile technology and the internet. Impressive because when I went to buy a phone it turns out that the most common form of mobile communication here is a paper cup threaded with string. The internet has arrived, but no-one is quite sure what to do with it yet. So it just sits in the corner in a box. Apparently between England and NZ is the largest time difference of all, but I didn’t know it was 10 years.

No! I’m doing it too. Note to self: Stop mocking lovely New Zealand! But it just makes it so easy.

The great thing about NZ is the quality of life. The other night I was looking out the window (we live right in the center) at the office blocks around, it was 5:45pm (I know because my watch told me) and there was no-one at their desks! What kind of backward nation would allow such a favourable work life balance? Contrast with the ‘most developed’ nation on earth the USA, where they make everyone work 9am-9pm everyday and reward you with 2hrs holiday a year. They call it Annual Leave, we call it a long lunch break. Yet I still feel naughty leaving the office at 5pm, like a school kid skipping Geography to smoke behind the bike sheds.

I now know what its like to be an American visiting England, wandering round taking photos and calling everything ‘quaint’. I can’t think of an apter description of this little dream country. “Oh look honey, they’ve got a little harbour, look at the little boats. My god that’s adorable”. Look at these pictures, can this place be real?

I took this one while sitting on a train. yep, on a train, a moving train, ‘choo choo’.

And there’s a million more sitting on my sd card. You don’t even need to look, just point your camera click, and out pops a beautiful scenic shot. Its the most photogenic country I’ve been to so far. I feel like I’ve moved in with a supermodel, and I can’t stop taking photos that everyone but me is already bored of looking at .

The one claim to fame the country is has is that Lord of the Rings was filmed here. The great irony is that it is the worlds shire. If you ever wanted to hide a gold ring from an evil wannabe dictator, you’d hide it here. No-one going to find this place, its about 50hrs from anywhere, safe and protected from the destructive influences facing other countries.

Its like a little volcanic sim city town, handcrafted by somebody who has no real understanding of the dynamics of public transport design looking at what a bitch it is to get around, but scoring full marks in the aesthetics dept. I keep waiting for that siren noise to start and then a tornado and a little growling godzilla creature to come out the sea and mess everything up. Its just too nice here. The hills, volcanoes, aqueducts, mountains, cliffs, beaches, boats in the harbour, parks, the nice shop workers who ask me constantly how I am. I’m sure I’m awake, but I have to fight the urge to go round pinching other things to see if they’re real and not made of pixie dust or by the acme corporation.

Well I say stop it New Zealand. This is a rallying call, stand up and be proud to be a kiwi! You’ve got spectacular scenery, short working hours, great weather, 0% unemployment….crowded house. Hold your head high and lets put New Zealand on the map. Or on the map in its own right and not as the home of lord of the rings, or a large town in Australia. Long Live New Zealand!